Meghana Bisineer | Artist Educator

LONDON OBSCURA

4:00 mins | Single channel video with sound | 2012

Converting my south London studio into a camera obscura*, I invited the outside cityscape to reveal itself inside the room. The studio turned outside-in, cityscape upside-down. Inhabited and documented frame-by-frame over several weeks, the place became a meditation - a retreat - calling for acute attention towards the rhythms of light and the city - a constant ping-pong of revelation, projection, relocation. Using long exposure on my digital camera, I captured the naturally projected cityscape on the walls and surfaces of my studio. Edited together these images made the film: London Obscura.

A camera obscura, (from the Latin, meaning: dark chamber) is a box or a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image of the outside world is projected onto the wall opposite the hole. Used since the 16th century.